We're homeschooling our son (10 years old) as a trial this term. Secular, science-oriented household with strong enough academic backgrounds that, if we decide to, we could comfortably cover academic content across the disciplines up through high school level. We also know from a previous brief period of homeschooling on an overseas trip, in which - to my surprise as well as my son's - he raced through several years of math in a few weeks, having previously been told by his teachers that this was his "weak" subject, that the individual approach we can offer at home, works much better for him educationally...
For him specifically, I would not have wanted to home school from the beginning. He is an anxious child, who struggles with, and prefers to avoid, social situations with other kids. Although I don't think school is a particularly good social environment, and I don't think its social environment maps onto anything people are likely to encounter in adulthood (things like the It Gets Better project capture some of the difference well...), still, it does provide access to an intense social crucible - and I felt that he needed some exposure to that, for desensitisation purposes and to have an opportunity to try out different coping strategies. For years, he spent many evenings curled up helplessly crying... But he also learned strategies for pulling himself together and going back the next day. And at school, he functioned okay - he developed and sustained friendships and wasn't perceived as someone who was particularly struggling socially.
Academically, although it's ostensibly a "good" public school, this just reflects the socio-economic demographic of the neighbourhood. The early years teachers were very good; after that, they've been terrible. The only math he's learned in three years is what we covered in our trip overseas. I've become increasingly anxious that he's falling behind and will struggle in high school as a result. At the same time, he seems to have "mastered" the social aspect - he's become quite popular, and no longer gets really upset at home. Instead, he's developed a sort of clinical analysis of the problems with how his teachers teach, and how they interact with other students and manage their classrooms (we're an academic household, so he hears us talk a lot about teaching technique and course design - he's picked this up and extrapolated it to his primary school...).
Because the social stuff no longer seems a source of major anxiety, and because I'm not impressed that he spends so much time in school, and brings home homework besides, while showing no noticeable skills improvements in two years (his grades are always off the charts - I think he's in the "too easy" basket - the school sees no reason to be teaching him more), when he proposed homeschooling last term, I was open to the idea. One of us is always home anyway to take care of our two-year-old. There are amazing materials available these days - homeschooled kids really can get access to their pick of some of the best instruction in the world, in any topic you could imagine. My "condition" for the home school trial was that he be involved in a range of activities outside the home, that would let him associate with other kids - he's really thriving in these, and comes home with excited stories about what he's done.
I'll need to ramp up the pace a bit in some areas - he's complaining that the science and the comparative religions studies I originally designed, aren't demanding enough... He wants more reading in both areas... :-P. He also wants to add violin lessons to his arts study (the last few weeks, he's been doing a drama class at the local community art centre, and also using some apps to learn how to read music). He thinks his economics project is too hard (I've tasked him with working out, with reference to a basket of common grocery items, which local store or market is least expensive, on average), but he's actually getting quite quick spotting the best value for particular items. He's making progress with his math, although it's only been a few weeks, so we're just covering what his school ought to have already been teaching, but hasn't been. He hates physical activity - he's not a coordinated kid - but that's no different from school, but he is gradually improving there as well.
But the biggest change has been in how much additional energy he has "left over" for the household. School "uses up" so much energy, he comes home so tired - and then has other nonsense he's meant to do, while we're also trying to get dinner ready. He can now focus hard on his study, work efficiently, and get it done - and then use his energy for other things. He's taken to organising household activities a couple evenings a week - movie nights, board games, card games - and is currently planning an "excursion" out of town. The change is remarkable.
The original plan was to do one trial term (9 weeks). Personally, I'd be willing to let him finish out primary school on a homeschool basis at this point, but I am waiting a bit longer to discuss it with him. High school is more complicated - again for social, rather than academic, reasons. On the one hand, I think high school is often a horrific social environment, and one that lacks checks and balances that would exist in almost every adult environment. On the other hand, he has a history of struggling socially, and I'm wondering if the various bounded social activities provide the same sort of social "practice" that high school would. We're in the zone of a good public high school that, on the surface at least, seems to have a pretty vibrant nerd culture - it could be a really positive thing...
I should note, though, that this worry is specific to my son: I don't generally think that home schooling is problematic socially. I was pretty indifferent to peer group issues as a kid - this put me in some danger at my high school, but there was no sense in which navigating that danger was beneficial, or equipped me for an independent adult life - quite the contrary... But I was sufficiently self-directed that I think I would have done fine with no formal schooling at all. My daughter, although still too young to know for sure, seems to be tending that way too. If that continues, I'd likely let her make her own choice about whether she's getting something from school or not. With my son, I just want to be careful to make sure his tendency to social anxiety doesn't lead him to isolate himself, which makes it a harder process to navigate...